"I am always happy to take credit where blame is due."--John Davis Frain

Monday, June 19, 2017

Contest results

As usual, you guyz were in amazon form on this contest! No surprise there of course, each contest seems to get better and better.

Sadly, our own Kate Higgins had her entry dq'ed for time. (Cue
wailing from professional quality mourners, and rending of garments) Kate, it
looks like you posted twice, deleted the two (maybe for a typo?) and the
third and final post was at 9:02am.

Special recognition for using words I had to look up

pogonip (Kerry Bernard 9:02am)

Amontillado (D. Willadsen 10:34am)

rime (Amy Schaefer 10:47am)

luchador (Shaunna 11:26a)--which I first read as luNchador,
and thought it was competitive lunching.

pogonophile (Terri Lynn Coop 5:52pm)

pomodoro (Lisa Bodenheim 8:15am)

Special recogniton for innovative use of prompt words

Hypogonadism. (Cally Orr 11:47am)

Hippo goop (Karen McCoy 1:46am

Not quite a story, but zowie, evocative!

Emalborn 9:06am

Not a story in the slightest but cracked me up completely

Steve Stubbs 12:23pm

Steve Forti does not disappoint with his dexterous use of
prompt words. I tried to foil him with "pogo" but got him instead with letter! as
in Let'er ride, not Lett' er ride!

AJ Blythe's entry about Steve Forti's entry cracked me up

A shark once thought she'd have the last laugh
But with letters Steve's too
clever by half
"Tempo Gone" he wrote
Pleased he could gloat
“Sublime” carved the shark for
his epitaph

An idea whose time has come: slalom pogo

Dena Pawling 7:55pm

Not to mention:pogo-a-gogo

John Davis (manuscript) Frain 2:01am

I'm pretty sure this is brilliant but I didn't quite get it

Lisa Bodenheim8:15am

Long list

Just Jan 8:44pm

Scott Sloan 10:51am

Megan V 11:20am

Madeline Mora-Summonte 4:19pm

Marie McKay 5:33pm

And the short list

Timothy Lowe 9:18am

Approach plotted, Excelsior. Commence flameout.

(A murderous tempo. Going down fast.
No way to attain the speed of the last
Man to fall from the sky like a sublime lost sun -
Shot from a gaping black hole like a gun.)

You’re too shallow, Excelsior! Pull up!

(Streaming down from the stars, a diaphanous cape
Filled with burning unease and a need to escape.
It’s like killing a miracle, just give in and pull it.
It’s dancing with fireworks, ballet with a bullet.

Terminal velocity: so easy, achieved -
But beginnings are deadly if not well conceived.)

*slap!*

“Fuck off, pickup artist!”

You have to read this carefully and realize there are two points of view. One is a guy getting shot out of a cannon. (Or so I surmised. There are a couple interpretations possible.)

Amy Schaefer 10:47am

“Get up.”
“No.”
“Get out of bed.”
“No!”
She staggered as another blast rocked
the building. The glowing letters
on the skyscrapers outside disappeared under rime.
“Please. The city needs you.”
He hid under a pillow. “I won’t fight Captain Cold. He’s bush-league.”
She grabbed the pillow. “You petty… The city is trapped in an ice fog!”
“It’s called pogonips,” he
muttered. She flared her nostrils. “What?”
She sighed. “Fine. I thought asking you was a compliment, but they’d better find someone else.” She
paused. “Maybe Batman—“Whoosh!
Lois caught her balance and smiled. “Faster than a speeding bullet.”

This cracked me up. It's a complete story with a delicious little twist.

Last night, while Mama hid her laptop behind Mr. Hippo, she said Michael might
show up in my room and invite me for a ride.
“He’s creepy”. I said.
“Go with him”.
“No!”
“Please, sweetheart. Do this and Papa will be gone forever”.
I like that. Gone forever - Papa, his guns, his hairy hands.
“Okay”.
Mama said she’ll find me. “Just keep Michael talking”.

“… lime sherbet.”
“That’s my favorite!”

This one stopped me dead in my tracks. At first I thought "oh no, someone is actually duplicating another entry!" We'd never had that happen before! I was aflutter. Then I realized that far from lifting someone else's entry, Cecilia had written her story around Michael Seese's entry:

Michael Seese's entry at 9:35am

“Where did Mr. Hippo go?”

Children lack the capacity to understand “gone forever.” So you ease them into
it. With a story, perhaps.

“Hippos are what's called an endangered species. To protect them a man takes
them somewhere safe. Like a zoo. There they practice the letters of the
alphabet. And eat lime sherbet.”

“That's my favorite!”

“It is? Imagine that. So I think Mr Hippos’s at the zoo, with his friends.
Koalas, tigers ...”

“No. He's at my house. When are you taking me home?”

I imagine her parents will have trouble wrapping their heads around “gone
forever” as well.

This is utterly brilliant and a deft feat of imagination and SPEED!, given Cecilia had to first read Michael's entry and THEN compose her own. As I said, this knocked my socks off.

flashfriday 8:34pm

You want fellas, this is the happening place, the matchmaker
says. No more boyfriend roulette.

Really??? I say.

Yep. Og—

Ogres? No way, I say. Dated those. Scars to prove it. See?

Ogres’ll never hassle you here, I was gonna say, she says. And that’s gross.

I'm a sucker for a good pun, and anything with dragons has my vote, and Hungry? I mean lonely, just cracked me up completely.

This week it wasn't hard to pick a winner. It'sCecilia Ortiz Luna for her amazing imaginative work. Cecilia wins the prize, but Michael Seese also gets a prize since he was provided the spark.

Thanks to each and every one of you who took the time to write and enter this contest. It's always a highlight of my weekend to read your work and see what new and amazing things you come up...not to mention new and amazing ways to make me laugh. You are a talented bunch, even the ones not on this list.

Loved PAH's playful language and humor ("throat-punch from a grandma"?) and Megan V's parallelism. As for the winners, obvious once I reread them. I have to admit, I missed Seese's brilliant twist the first time.

As for mine, I'm blown away that Janet recognized the POV shift. I thought it was too dense and obtuse to mean much to anyone, but what the muse hands you, you gotta go with. To clarify, I imagined a pilot trying to bring a ship back through the atmosphere without burning up. But the end reveals that he's really a pickup artist going down in flames with a shitty "approach." The slap is the woman giving him what he deserves.

Impressive feat, Cecilia! I didn't get the connection until this morning. Michael, what a creepy story--loved it! I had a few favorites this contest, including Amy Schaefer and flashfriday. Thanks again to Janet (for sponsoring) and Susan (for the inspiration). And congrats to everyone mentioned.

I was actually planning to write about Ogopogo, the Canadian Loch Ness monster. But when I read Michael Seese's entry, my heart stopped because of its brilliance and the way it resonated with me.

For the last few years here in Alberta there has been a spate of abduction/murders of little girls the most gruesome of which is the one involving Hailey Dunbar-Blanchette. As a mother of two girls, this terrifies me.

When I read Michael's entry, I thought "Hey, this is the same creep from Noise In Space's winning entry a few contests ago!And now he's taking her away!"

So I entered Michael's story world to give this fictional girl the way out that I wish Hailey and all the other real abducted/murdered girls had.

As soon as I read Michael's story, and terrifying ending, I knew this was the one. Then later in the day, I read Cecilia's and had the same reaction as Janet, for a split second. Then it was holy smokes-land.

And Janet? Yeah, letter was the tough word for me too. Other people used it so well, though. You just never know what direction your brain wants to go in, and sometimes you're dragged there whether you like it or not.

Thanks for these contests. It is challenging to try to craft something fresh and unique, but also it is a delicious little thrill to check back through the day and read the entries a few at a time. Usually with my breath held. Quite a lovely community you've built here.

Absolutely inspired, Cecelia! So glad you're bringing attention to this issue. I read a newspaper article the other day about an abducted girl who's been missing for three weeks. Bone-chilling. Thanks for a happy ending to stories that often aren't.

OH NO I was working on a project (8k words in a day and a half working-on-a-project) and I somehow forgot about the contest until 8:58 a.m. Sunday morning! I sighed mournfully and resigned myself to reading the results and HOLY SMOKES THEY ARE AMAZING. Such a great job, everybody!

Also, my latest short story "Daddy's Girl" just went live at Syntax & Salt. I haven't read the issue yet, but they've published some pretty choice stories in the past!

I think it was a rocket ship. Of course, I write science fiction. Everything is science fiction to me. Except real life, unfortunately. I really liked the poem... now THAT's cadence AND rhythm. You're getting the guy's heightened pulse rate and excitement here, and the 'command' voice was a brilliant off-set. Everything works so well together here. The adventure sets up the misadventure we see at the end, and ... well. It really works.

I was just a little disappointed to find that his crash-and-burn was less spectacular than the poem leading up to it... but it does fit, and it's very well done.

Celia - whereabouts in Alberta are you? (If you don't want to give the exact place, even the nearest city would be interesting.) I have friends and relatives all over the province.

I'm in Regina, SK. But there's a pretty cool conference in Calgary every year called When Words Collide, and I was wondering if you've ever been. I've only been able to go once, a couple years ago. It's mostly for fantasy and science fiction writers, though they have workshops on tons of stuff. And the conference itself is fairly inexpensive (the hotel is a bit expensive, but you don't have to stay there.) It happens in August, but it's already sold out for this year. You could try for next year, though, if you're interested.

If you want to chat, you can e-mail me at bjmuntain [at] sasktel [dot] net

Aarrrgh...That's what I get for sleeping in on the West Coast on a Sunday (9am is 6am) And yes, you are correct, Your Sharkiness, I am a slave to typo correcting...sigh.And I had such a good short entry too.But my timing sucked......oh, well there's always next time.

I couldn't have done any better then the winner(s) anyway. Congratulations!

Michael: Really? Janet has been mentioning it on contests for the past few years. And I keep gabbing on about it, asking for gems to add, etc. So, yes! There is a page in the Treasure Chest where I list the published works of blog readers. This includes books (trad or non-trad), short stories, flash fiction, newspaper columns--if you've been published, we want to know! Just drop me an email with a list of your published works, and where people might find them. If they're available online, please provide a link. Thanks! :)

If you're interested in finding out more about the world of the luchadors, may I suggest the film Nacho Libre? It's not a Cannes Film Festival candidate, but it's awfully fun, if it's late at night and you've had a rough day that you just don't want to think about anymore.

For a great kid's book about luchadores, check out Yuyi Morales's book: Niño Wrestles the World. There's also a wonderful YouTube video of her reading it aloud. I believe she won an award for the illustrations, too.

In my head I was thinking luchadors were a type of dog (not sure why, maybe because it sounds like lurcher?). So I consulted google... not even close, but I learnt something new - Mexican wrestlers (I assume of the American wrestling variety and not the Olympic wrestling variety).

I'm late to the game because my blood line and life line, the great and grand internet swooned for almost 24 hours. I had to do things like, you know, clean and stuff. In the words of Grumpy Cat . . . It was awful.

Congrats to one and all - Cecilia and Michael and all the shout outs. For such seemingly simple words, the breadth of the imagination and tomfoolery was amazing.

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